With its customer base expanding in the rural markets, Maruti Suzuki India is planning to widen its service network in such areas, a company official said.
The contribution of rural markets to the total sales volume of Maruti increased from 20.5% in FY11 to 40.9% in FY21. The country’s largest passenger vehicle manufacturer reached the cumulative sales mark of 5 million units in the rural markets in the second quarter of this fiscal.
“Our major focus is on the rural markets. We intend to expand our network more and more into the rural markets,” Partho Banerjee, senior executive director, service, Maruti Suzuki India, told FE.
“With the emergence of new Bharat, we have seen an increase in customer base in rural pockets in the last couple of years. This automatically calls for being present extensively for this set of customers, so as to provide quality after-sales support to them. Moreover, we believe, quality services ought to be provided timely and the facilities have to be near the customer,” he added.
Maruti currently has more than 4,240 service outlets across the country, having added more than 200 new facilities in FY22.
“In FY22, we have already activated more than 200 service touchpoints, which is higher than the average of the last five years. Our average over the last five years has been 180. This year, it has already surpassed 200 and we will be adding some more in March. We will endeavour to surpass FY22 numbers in FY23 with something around 250 service touchpoints,” Banerjee said.
According to Banerjee, Maruti is doing almost 600,000 scheduled services every month. However, if all the three service categories — free, scheduled and running repairs — are taken into account, the company does almost 60,000 services every day. The customers buying a new Maruti Suzuki car do not have to pay labour charges for the first three services.
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“We are right now growing by 15% in scheduled services over FY21. Most of the people did not drive the vehicle much during the Covid-19 period. So they were under the impression that since they had not driven their vehicle, it did not require a scheduled service. We educated the customers that it doesn’t matter whether the vehicle has been driven or not, they must get the vehicle serviced as per the schedule,” Banerjee explained.
But compared to pre-Covid times, he said that the growth is 1.5% in scheduled services during the first 11 months of FY22.
Maruti Suzuki India recently introduced a customer convenience package, which will provide vehicle coverage for failures in the engine due to hydrostatic lock and fuel adulteration.
